Campaigners claim plans will leave women vulnerable to violence and continued criminalisation

SEX WORKERS rights groups have slammed a new Scottish Labour policy to tackle the sex industry as likely to increase the risks of “violence” to sex workers.

The Labour policy proposes what the party calls a “three pronged framework” of criminalising the buyers of sex, decriminalisation for people “involved in prostitution”, and providing long term support for those who are exploited in sex work.

However, sex workers rights organisation Scotpep and the UK wide National Ugly Mugs group (Ugly Mugs is a term for distributing information to protect sex workers from violence) said that the new policy was being deceptively presented as emancipatory for sex workers when it actually involves an “ideological” opposition to sex work and would only leave sex workers vulnerable to violence.

“The party appears to have been captured by a right-wing and homophobic evangelical perspective that has no place in a modern Scotland.” Nadine Stott, Scotpep

Nadine Stott, Scotpep co-chair, said: “Everywhere that these laws have been tried. They have led to an increase in sex workers’ vulnerability to violence.

“In Scotland, the clients of street-based sex workers were criminalised in 2008 under the kerb-crawling ban. When this was brought in, Scotpep, which at the time was funded by the Scottish Government to do outreach and services, saw a 95 per cent rise in violence against street-based sex workers in just the first six months of the law.

“We are shocked and disappointed that Scottish Labour would look at this huge rise in violence and think that this was a successful policy worth extending.”

“Their proposals are nothing more than a rapists’ charter. We would hope that their membership will revolt on this issue, where the party appears to have been captured by a right-wing and homophobic evangelical perspective that has no place in a modern Scotland.”

The sex workers organisations have endorsed the New Zealand model of full decriminalisation of sex work.

Alex Feis-Bryce, Ceo of National Ugly Mugs, said that Labour’s policy represented a “moral crusade” against sex work that could only result in harm to the women involved in the industry.

She said: “Our day-to-day work is one hundred percent about providing practical support to try to help keep sex workers safe, so it’s gutting to see proposals put forward that, if enacted, would empower violent perpetrators.

“Their claim that these proposals decriminalise sex workers is totally disingenuous and should be exposed for what it is – a PR stunt to disguise the real objective of their moral crusade: to attempt to eradicate sex work for ideological reasons irrespective of the harm to sex workers.”

“I thought the Labour Party was about defending the rights of workers – yet Scottish Labour want to stand in the way of my labour rights?” Katya, Scottish sex worker

The campaign for the decriminalisation of sex work is deeply controversial within the feminist and women’s rights movements, with some campaigners concerned that decriminalisation effectively endorses the abuse of women, and many in the sex industry eager for the protections they believe decriminalisation will afford.

Scottish sex worker Katya said: “I thought the Labour Party was about defending the rights of workers – yet Scottish Labour want to stand in the way of my labour rights? Sex work is work, and we need look to the New Zealand model, not more failed criminalisation. There will be a lot of working class women in Scotland not voting Labour in May as a result of this.”

It’s Trans Awareness Week! In 2018, the representation of transgender actors and actresses on film and television has increased significantly. The '80s-set FX series Pose cast the highest number of transgender actresses as series regulars, while a successful campaign against cisgender actress Scarlett Johansson playing the role of transgender man Dante "Tex" Bill in the film Rub & Tug ensured that the […]

Hey Gang. While recording this White On White Crime episode, the wire issue with William's microphone got in the way so we have to use the secondary recording from the facebook live. We'll be replacing that microphone cord from The Wine Cellar Media this weekend and if that doesn't do it, we're finally going to […]

Hey gang. The title of this one came from a riff from one of the two stories getting hit up today. There is a George Zimmerman update and a new story about an attempted Racist murder that only got the murderer 4 years.

Hey gang. Let the folks down at Teen Vogue know that they need full time podcasters on ther staff. This is the Morning Wine Cellar for 11/13/18. William is here to do a solo riff real quick and we'll be back later for the evening Wine Cellar. https://www.patreon.com/WineCellarMediaFund http://PayPal.Me/PhoenixAndWilliam Police accused of threatening sex workers […]

Hey gang. We jump straight into an.... "Analysis" article by John Blake. We had an episode in 2017 where we dug into the question "What Is Woke" and now we're back on this term again. From there we tackle some headlines and stories briefly. Some fun audio is at the beginning and end for podcast […]

Morning Wine Cellar. Hey Gang. We open up with a brief riff on folks voting in their interests. From there, we jump over to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez being Melinnial AF. And we close out in Cameroon. Hey gang. We need to get our YouTube up to 4,000 subscribers before we can apply to monetize. Help […]

At least 79 students and three others, including the principal, were seized early on Monday morning in Bamenda, the capital of the North-West region, a government official has told the BBC. A massive search operation involving the Cameroonian army is now under way. Cameroon's North-West and South-West regions have been hit by a s ecessionist […]

Hey gang. Dropping in with a quick post election Morning Wine Cellar and I gotta get to the factory a little early today. Florida is going to let felons vote. JB Pritzker snagged up Illinois and Facebook let advertisers aim for that White Genocide click. Hey gang. We need to get our YouTube up to […]

Hey gang. This is one of those episodes that can't get a cohesive title. This is all over the place Wine Cellar News and Comment. We got our vote on over here in Illinois right before coming home and going live. But we got to do without being met with a racist and his German […]

Hey gang. Let's trigger warning it up. This is a quick Morning Wine Cellar. We jump right in with the story of a Trans Woman facing Sadistic abuse by the legal system. LINK - Dallas jailers ordered transgender woman to show her genitals, lawsuit says From we dive right into news updates out of Seattle […]

Hey gang. On this one Phoenix gives up the low down on recent Lena Dunham And Rebel Wilson news. We're not ready to play the audio from the Scott Beierle video that was captured and re uploaded. But there is some reading from the incel thread where the video was posted. There's an update on […]

Hey gang. This is a quick Morning Wine Cellar for 11/5/18. We rip through a SESTA FOSTA update in San Francisco and William briefly tangents from reading the name Kamala Harris. Sex workers already didn't have rights. SESTA FOSTA removed their ways of working around not having rights and increased the looming dangers they faced. […]

Hey gang. Of course we're gonna dig into the intraracial misogynist story. Though the original show prep was about Boyce Watkins and his guest speaker Cluade Anderson. You're going to hear wicked ideas about white women hunting black men and the glass ceiling being white women having equality with black men. Yea. Conservatives are […]

If you haven’t been following the strain of Black conservatives we’ve been following from The Wine Cellar, you may have missed the new narrative. These Black conservatives ARE NOT Republicans. For the most part, they’re non partisan and many of this particular crowd actually think legislation, bills, amendments, school board members, city ordinances etc: don’t […]

Hey gang. In this one, we jump right in with the title story. We move over to a disturbing story that ends with a white man being arrested safe and alive. In a better world, we'd handle that different. We take brief look at Chinese activity in Africa. Then do some extra time on Coach […]

Hey gang. In this one, we hop in with some #BeckyLivesmatter news. A bit of Nazi and KKK for sale... For X-Mas? Then we take a look at this "Twitter War" between Candace and Tomi and why I find it interesting. We close out with a glance down in Australia. WE NEED 4,000 SUBSCRIBERS ON […]

Hey gang Maddie Stump comes through on this one for a much less entry level episode on Trans Rights. We know each other from the Facebook and have never interacted verbally before. We used Skype to record so there are the moments of our voices bumping into each other. Overall, Maddie lit this episode up […]